Development of a tool to investigate instructor and student perceptions of college biology classroom teaching

Over the past two decades, education researchers have called for reform of undergraduate\ud science education to increase student engagement through scientific teaching. However,\ud previous attempts to assess the extent to which instructors are using reformed teaching methods have been challenging. Previously used instructor self-reported assessments have been unreliable in assessing teaching strategies used in classrooms, and direct observations by outside observers have proved to be time-consuming and expensive. To avoid these issues, a novel survey tool was developed to measure instructor and student perceptions of teaching strategies. Here, I describe the development of the Instructor/Student Perceptions o f Their College Biology Classroom Survey, as well as the novel analysis metrics developed to quantify the data generated by the survey. Using this data, I show how the analysis metrics can be used to begin to describe a course as using\ud Scientific Teaching or Traditional Teaching strategies. Furthermore, based on this initial\ud exploration, I recommend changes to the survey for future use. This survey tool has the\ud potential to distinguish between classes taught with different pedagogies and to be used\ud as a professional development tool for faculty interested in changing their teaching strategies